Friday, 28 August 2015

Migrants sleep on a bench at a park in Belgrade, Serbia on Friday.
Over 10,000 migrants, including many women with babies and small
children, have crossed into Serbia over the past few days and headed
toward Hungary and the EU Schengen Area: photo by Marko Drobnjakovic/AP, 28 August 2015

Honest Chicken in Transit Zone Europe

Just drove past truck on A4 in Austria with 50 dead refugees inside. Terrible smell of death as we passed.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

Hungarian
police arrest driver of lorry that had 71 dead migrants inside:
Romanian national held after death toll in Austrian motorway tragedy is
raised from initial estimate of about 50 victims: Luke harding and
agencies, The Guardian, 28 August 2015

Hungarian police have arrested the driver of a lorry found on an
Austrian motorway with the decomposing bodies of more than 70 people
inside.

Police cars round truck in which refugees died at side of #Austrian motorway. Travelling fm Serbia, they suffocated.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

The man is a Romanian national, a police statement said on Friday. It
came as the Austrian interior ministry confirmed it had made arrests in
the case, following reports from the Krone newspaper
that seven smugglers linked to the lorry had been held by authorities
in Hungary. The main organisers are still at large, and believed to be
in Romania, it said.

The death toll was raised on Friday from initial estimates of 20 to
50 following the discovery of the remains on Thursday morning on
Austria’s A4 motorway between Neusiedl and Parndorf. The truck, which
had been abandoned on the hard shoulder of the road near Parndorf, had
apparently been there since Wednesday. Austrian police said all those on
board appeared to have suffocated and died before they entered the
country.

Forensic experts investigate a truck in which refugees were found dead in Austria: photo by Roland Schlager/EPA, 27 August 2015

Austrian police said of the 71 dead, 59 were men, eight women and four children, and included Syrian refugees.

The lorry set off from Budapest in the early hours of Wednesday
morning, and reached the Hungarian-Austrian border by 9am. It crossed
into Austria that night and was spotted on the A4 at 5am or 6am on Thursday, police said.

Forensic team at the truck containing suffocated #refugees at side of #Austrian motorway. Travelling fm Serbia, they suffocated.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

The state of the bodies had made establishing an exact death toll
difficult. Their identities were also not known, said Hans Peter
Doskozil, head of police in the eastern district of Burgenland. “The
deaths already occurred some time ago,” he added. “We can make no
concrete assumptions about the origin or cause [of death]. We can
assume, however, that they are refugees.”

An abandoned truck on the outskirts of Vienna was found to contain the decomposed remains the bodies of 71 people, assumed to be migrants: photo by
Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency, 27 August 2015

The 7.5-tonne vehicle used to belong to the Slovak chicken meat
company Hyza and still has the slogan “Honest chicken” on the side. The
company said it sold the lorry in 2014. According to the Hungarian
government, it is registered to a Romanian citizen from the central city
of Kecskemét.

Road officials said on Thursday that an employee mowing the grass
alerted police after noticing putrid liquid dripping from the back of
the white refrigerated vehicle. Its door had been left ajar. Detectives
then made the grim discovery.

An abandoned truck carrying the dead bodies of people assumed to be migrants was found in Austria on Thursday. Images
in the Austrian news media showed a white vehicle with a rear cooler
compartment, emblazoned with the word “Hyza” in brown letters, with a
chicken standing in for the letter Y, surrounded by police cars.: photo by
Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency, 27 August 2015

Forensic teams at the scene examined the lorry, which has Hungarian
number plates. Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News tweeted that the “smell
of death” at the scene was overwhelming. On Thursday afternoon, police
towed the vehicle to a nearby hall and began removing bodies.

In a statement on Thursday, Austria’s interior minister, Johanna
Mikl-Leitner, denounced the traffickers as criminals. “This tragedy is a
concern for us all. Smugglers are criminals. They have no interest in
the welfare of refugees. Only profit.”

A
truck stands on the shoulder of
the highway A4 near Parndorf south of Vienna, on Austria, Thursday. At
least 20 migrants were found dead in the truck parked on the
Austrian highway leading from the Hungarian border, police said: photo by Ronald Zak/AP, 27 August 2015

The
EU has found itself overwhelmed by the sheer scale of migration,
with a record number of 107,500 migrants crossing the EU’s border last
month. Chaotic attempts by Macedonian police to hold back refugees last
week failed. On Wednesday, the UN's Refugee Agency said it expected
3,000 people a day to enter Macedonia from Greece until at least the end
of the year.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union foreign policy chief Federica
Mogherini and Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic, from left, listen to
a speech at the start of the Western Balkans Summit in the Hofburg
palace in Vienna, Austria: photo by Roland Zak/AP, 27 August 2015

Berlin, backed by Austria,
wants a new system of mandatory quotas for refugees across the EU
despite the issue being rejected in acrimonious scenes by EU leaders at a
summit in June. Germany expects 800,000 asylum applications this year.
The EU has also proposed a common “safe countries of origin” list, which
would see migrants from these nations swiftly deported.

With
the EU’s common border policy increasingly dysfunctional, member
states are taking matters into their own hands. Hungary is building a
new fence along its border with Serbia, though this week refugees got
through with relative ease.Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, opposes the initiative, saying: “We are not advocates of
fences.”

On Tuesday, meanwhile, Austrian police arrested three drivers on
suspicion of transporting migrants from Syria and other war-torn areas
into the EU. One of them had driven 34 people packed into the back of a
white van across the Austrian border.

The group included 10 small children, whom the driver abandoned by
the side of the motorway near the city of Bruck an der Leitha. According
to police, the migrants said in interviews they were hardly able to
breathe during the trip.

They had asked repeatedly for more air, but the driver had ignored
their requests, police added, and had driven without stopping from
Serbia to Austria.

“People dying in their dozens –- whether crammed into a truck or a
ship -– en route to seek safety or better lives is a tragic indictment of
Europe’s failures to provide alternative routes,” he said. “Europe has
to step up and provide protection to more, share responsibility better
and show solidarity to other countries and to those most in need.”

Investigations underway after up to 50 refugees found dead in truck in Austria:: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 27 August 2015

Honest Chicken Took Them On Their Last Ride

Dozens of dead migrants found in abandoned lorry in eastern Austria, near the Hungarian border. The German daily Kurier has written that the refugees
suffocated to death in the lorry's cargo container, probably a long time
ago. Hyza, Slovakia's leading poultry producer and processor, said in a press release that
the lorry no longer belongs to the company, which sold it in 2013 or
2014. Hyza, seated in Topoľčany, west Slovakia, says on its website that
since 2006 it has been a part of Agrofert, a giant holding company owned by
Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis.: photo by Czech News Agency via Prague Post, 27 August 2015

......................................................................A Syrian migrant carries his children as he walks along a railway
track to cross the Serbian border with Hungary near the village of
Horgos on Thursday: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 27 August 2015

I'd agree that there are no special exemptions for Assad and Putin. However, the issue here is how we respond to the crisis as it currently stands. Europe needs to establish safe routes for those fleeing ISIL or other conflicts, rethink the whole quota system, bring some security into those families' lives. There is nowhere else for them to go. We have to help them - whether as penance or no matters little. That is the bottom line.

Having just seen the advert on the link above, what worries me more is the return of fascism as a serious political prospect in Europe. These people are so much meat to many here.

Having now put a bit of research into the several mysteries surrounding that abandoned ghost van on the Austrian motorway, I've yet to detect how it can be that a large meat processing firm sold off one of its vans, brand logo still intact, at a time not now recalled exactly, to persons not now recalled; nor how said meat processing firm would explain its incredibly xenophobic and racist television ad campaign, likening, in primitive cartoon fashion, competitive non-national meat processing firms to Islamic terror organizations; nor how it can be explained that the company in question happens to be owned by Andrej Babiš, Slovak Finance Minister, from whom we've yet to hear a comment on any of this. A grand conspiracy of coincidence may lie therein. Of which any accidental inkling will surely be dismissed more swiftly than one can say "Charlie Hebdo".

The worried question of political responsibility for this massive and tragic displacement of suffering people should and doubtless will be a subject of interest to historians, provided history continues on yet awhile. I would tend to agree with Vincent's analysis on that. But -- then what?

Political arguments will always be abstract and distant from immediate realities, the more painfully so in proportion with the urgency of the realities.

This is about as urgent a reality as one is capable of imagining.

What matters now is how to somehow address and relieve the incalculable suffering.

It's pretty obvious the business conglomerate known as the EU was never going to be of much use to those who are in real trouble. Is there anything left to be asked on this point, after the spectacle of cruel and unusual punishment matter-of-factly dealt out to Greece?

The displaced people now moving out of areas of extreme danger toward perceived areas of relief are experiencing hardship of a sort unthinkable for most citizens of "the West".

The possibility of acceptance, acculturation and "a new life" in the West for these refugees is complicated in large degree by the fact they are so unwelcome en masse because such a large majority are Muslims, and an insane epidemic of Islamophobia now holds the West in its brain-dead grasp, contributing in large degree to the final phase in what was once called The Decline of the West.

The dehumanization of the Other, the alarming outbreak of tribalistic nationalist political programs, the resentment and persecution of outsiders, excluded in a sweeping gesture of thoughtless cruelty from simple membership in any perceptible human community, will mark "our time" as a dark passage in history -- if, again, history continues to stumble downward into darkness yet awhile longer.

And finally, who amongst us, "out here", can really know what things are like for the wandering dispossessed, the unwanted, the forgotten, the lost?

It appears all they have to go on now is a resilience born of desperate necessity, forlorn hope, and the curious, inexplicable desire of life to somehow carry on.

Care is care, hearts are hearts, they beat for a time, then don't. All lives matter. Even those unlike our own.

This from a doctor at the makeshift reception centre for refugees in Passau:

"Dr Ingo Martin, a general practitioner more used to working with the police on drug- and alcohol-related incidents than to dealing with the victims of civil war, does a daily round at the reception centre, inspecting conditions he said reminded him of second world war injuries he had previously seen only in medical textbooks. 'Ulcerous gunshot wounds, grenade splinters in arms and legs, and feet that are cut to the bone,' he said, during a break. 'Lots of war injuries that have not had a chance to heal during the long and stressful journeys here. It’s a little like being in a military hospital.' But what has possibly shocked him most are the lacerations to the head he has treated – a result of smugglers packing their vehicles ever fuller and slamming the doors with little regard for those inside."

A laboratory for refugee politics: inside Passau, the 'German Lampedusa'

By the by, on a possibly related note, we here on our small patch have perhaps been sensitized more than might be considered "healthy", in recent years, by experience of misfortune, right here, in "the West", where all inconvenience is meant to be made endurable by whatever means or agencies are designated to palliate suffering in the "civilized" world.

Those means however are beyond our reach, useless, vulnerable, unemployed, isolated, incurably non-subscribing old people that we are. Any palliative care that occurs here is of the kind extended by us to the very many stray, abandoned or ailing animals who've come to our door, over the years. They went in time from being Other to being Family, for us, and while of course they are not as intricately wired as humans, their company has taught us much. Two days ago a cat who had been with us nearly twenty years finally had to be euthanized, after much suffering, only four months after the passing of his female sibling, also once abandoned and abused, latterly dearly beloved -- each loss in turn greatly lamented. Our meagre back yard has grown over the years into an ever more extensive burial ground. These creatures were once unwanted by anyone, yet proved capable not only of accepting but of returning love, once it was extended to them.

In this respect, they've taught us more than any book, article, media source or what have you, helping us to adopt what I guess might be called a pro-refugee view of the living.

And in case anybody was wondering about the original owner of that chicken truck... let me introduce you to Andrej Babiš, Slovak Fiance Minister, now contender for the seat of Prime Minister.

"Over the past two years, Czech democracy has taken such a turn for the worse that some leading political scientists talk about the twilight of the liberal state," wrote Adam Drda in Politico's Foreign Voice on 11 September 2014. "One man above all is associated with this erosion: Andrej Babiš. He is deputy prime minister, finance minister – and the billionaire owner of major newspapers and mass media outlets, and of one of the largest Czech companies, Agrofert. His approach to politics is reflected in the slogans of the populist movement that he founded and leads, ANO: ‘Run the state like a business’, and ‘We work hard – unlike politicians’."

"...there is little doubt that Babiš was a member and beneficiary of the communist system. To this day, his close associates include Libor Široký, now chairman of Agrofert’s supervisory board, but reportedly a former member of one of the secret-police units most closely linked to the Soviet KGB.To this day, his close associates include Libor Široký, now chairman of Agrofert’s supervisory board, but reportedly a former member of one of the secret-police units most closely linked to the Soviet KGB."

This former party functionary, Andrej Babiš, Slovak by blood, opportunist by nature, would flourish under capitalism.

"... in 1991, it was ... a rapidly changing environment that was opening up to market forces. Former Communists enjoyed huge advantages, with their experience of international business, and their contacts abroad and in public administration. Babiš flourished. He became the head of one of Petrimex’s divisions and in 1992, in the months ahead of Czechoslovakia’s split, suggested that Petrimex set up a branch in Prague, the future Czech capital. It was from this branch that Agrofert emerged.

"With financing from still-undisclosed foreign sources, Babiš gradually gained full executive control of Agrofert and created a business with 200 subsidiaries across the agriculture, food and chemicals sectors. The history of Agrofert, detailed in a recent book by the journalist Tomáš Pergler, is closely linked to its control of the Czech petrochemicals industry. One reviewer of the book said the account “captures much of what has led Czechs to the conviction that they live in a corrupted, clientist country – and (paradoxically) then to vote for the ANO movement.” The book also details the political and business contacts cultivated by Babiš and the saga of the privatisation of the petrochemicals group Unipetrol. Though Agrofert’s majority owner was still a mystery, the Czech government agreed to sell Unipetrol to Agrofert in 2001. The deal fell through when Agrofert failed to meet payment deadlines. Three years later, after Babiš had finally bought a majority stake in Agrofert, he linked up with Poland’s PKN Orlen and put in a second bid – and won again. Babiš has built up his mainly Czech-Slovak business empire in part through political contacts.

"He has proved adept at exerting pressure – Pergler’s book tries to show, for example, how he convinced members of the Czech parliament to overturn a presidential veto in a dispute over biofuel in 2010.

"Why Babiš took the next step – to enter politics directly – remains unclear. Perhaps it was simply because some political friends had lost their positions. But he also judged the moment astutely...

"Since 2010, Czechs have – wrongly and often hysterically – begun to believe that they are on the brink of poverty. The public sees corruption and cronyism in government as the central political problem, but it no longer trusts the police and the courts, and increasingly sees the need for a ‘non-politician’ – someone who can change the political system.

"Babiš sensed that. In 2011, Babiš founded ANO. The name is the Czech word for ‘yes’, and is also an acronym for ‘action by dissatisfied citizens’. In 2013, he bought the MAFRA – a media group with two influential daily newspapers. Later in the year, despite a manifesto that promised little more than a battle against corruption, ANO won 19% of the vote from ‘outraged’ Czechs, giving the newly minted MP the role of kingmaker in forming a government with the slightly larger Social Democrats and the much weaker Christian Democrats.

"The Czech Republic is now a paradox: a society disgusted with corruption has given huge power to a man whose business interests amount to the biggest conflict of interest in the country’s post-1989 history. Babiš has taken ANO into Europe’s liberal group in the European Parliament, but he is not a liberal in its customary definition. He portrays himself as a self-made man, a non-politician, a man of the people, a man for whom parliament is a 'talking-shop'. He does not embrace democracy: his indignation over the failure to upgrade Czech motorways prompted him to declare: 'One of these days, we’ll probably all be screwed by this democracy.'"

If fascism returns to Europe it will be via the Babishes of the continent fronting for Putin.

I think Putin is both supporting parties and manipulating extremist elements in a long game with the goal of creating support for Putin's increasingly neofascist government. In the last five years political activity by the far right, especially in terms of anti-immigrant demonstrations, has gone from a few weirdos and some skinheads holding small rallies to large and well-organized gatherings. Putin has been caught funneling money to Le Pen's infamous National Front in France, and given that Putin is one of the richest men in the world who oversees the siphoning of taxes directly to his own pockets and to the rest of the powers that be, he can more than afford to throw money all over Europe. More and more alternative parties, some that consider themselves left-wing like Syriza in Greece, have cozied up to Putin in just the last couple years. We've already seen the deer-in-the-headlights reaction of Europe to Putin's invasion and annexation of Eastern Ukraine. On this side of the ocean, we've seen magazines like The Nation cheerleading 24/7 for Putin and the occupation, and this kind of shilling is all over the place in alternative forums in Europe. Internet troll farms in Russia that pay youngsters a decent wage to maintain dozens of different Internet identities in order to flood the comments sections of websites with pro-Putin POVs. Most of the former Eastern Bloc, with its megarich former Communists wielding power behind the scenes and often in elected offices (see Vaclav Klaus in Czech Republic--he's also Europe's biggest climate change denier BTW), is already set. Hungary, with Putin's pal Vikor Orban's invention of "illiberal democracy", is already there.

What worries Duncan re the return of fascism as a serious political prospect should concern all of us; here in the new German protectorate of Griechenland, the hopes of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party's garnering third place in the upcoming September 20th elections have been bolstereded by the vitriol and physical abuse it employs against all immigrants. This story should have a familiar ring for all the EU leaders and especially Germany’s, but who’s listening?

The world tide of immigrants and refugees swells and grows every day, the response of politicians is not to relieve but to exploit the great wave of exhausted sorrowful humans, who continue on despite all barriers in demonstration of a human resilience that's as miraculous to behold as the reasons it's necessary are shameful to consider.

Vassilis, we have our own Golden Dawn. It happens whenever the backwash from one of Don Trump's choppers causes an untoward uplift, making the blond hairpiece stand straight up and salute the flag. That also happens when he's interviewed, by satellite link, by Sarah Palin, and by the way, it's not the hairpiece then. He told her the Bible is (of course) his favourite book, but when she pressed him a bit -- well, more like tickled, he always loves that -- and asked him to specify the verse he likes best, he said it was right on the tip of his tongue... but he had a plane to catch.

Not just any plane mind you, but the one with the five huge letters spelling out his name on the side, which belongs to him.

The cynical political exploitation of the mass movements of people has already become the defining feature of the US presidential contest, Trump's famous success with his floated proposal to deport eleven million Mexicans now being regarded by the fading, increasingly desperate pack of contenders less as the last straw of insanity than as the new standard baseline approach to "dealing with the problem".

And the polls, those geniuses, are right there with them, in the braindead mud wrestling competition to win an all-expenses-paid residency at the Casa Blanca.

Yesterday Scott Walker, stalwart foe of reproductve rights, frantically leapt in with a last-minute "plan" to build a border wall between Canada (yes) and the US, stretching from ocean to ocean. Does this mean that our Scott actually thinks of Canadians the way Trump thinks of Mexicans (rapists, murderers, drug addicts)? Not on your life. He thinks Canada is the host country for Islamic terror squadrons.

We have thinker after thinker.

Chris Christie thinks all immigrants should be electronically scanned and tagged so that they can be tracked every minute, thus, naturally, do no harm. After all, did a FedEx package ever do harm? (Don't answer.) And indeed it's FedEx Chris takes as his business model. He's planning to put in call and have them come over and hook the whole thing up, no problem. Once he's President, like. You know, first thing.